


yukta

by toujours_nigel



Category: Hindu Religions & Lore
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-30
Updated: 2019-04-30
Packaged: 2020-02-10 08:24:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18656662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toujours_nigel/pseuds/toujours_nigel
Summary: Then they are alone at last, after all the lonely months.





	yukta

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MayavanavihariniHarini](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayavanavihariniHarini/gifts).



So they go, back to Nisadh after everything, Nala godlike in his divine raiment and Damayanti lovelier with the turning of years. The people rejoice as they always do in these songs, and Pushkar untouched by envy goes lamenting to his sliver of the state. There is a feast of return and a feast of reconciliation, but at last the people pour out from palace back to their own homes: the fields that need tending and the fruit that needs picking and the cows that need milking. Night darkens Nala’s beautiful palace as it darkens the skies above the homes of his ministers and merchants and military.

The queen’s maids polish her skin with sandalwood and powdered shells, and anoint her with jasmine oil. They dry her hair with the winding smoke of frankincense and roses and pin golden flowers in her braids. They drape her in wind-light muslin and pull out bangles clustered with gems from silk-wrapped cedar chests. They giggle and murmur and embrace Damayanti in storms of yearning boldness. Pushkar has no wife, only a half-grown girl wild for the hunt, nothing at all like their gracious mistress save in strength of will. They sing her to the king’s chambers and laugh with his attendants, themselves still fragrant from Nala’s bath.

Then they are alone, Nala and Damayanti, as they have not been since he left her sleeping on a bed of moss, after all the months of deceit and loneliness, kingdoms lost and found again. In the mirrored lake the swans are sleeping with their heads tucked beneath their wings, in the antechamber their attendants are listening for voices raised in passion. All her vaunted wit deserts Damayanti: she has tricked her husband and shouted at him, and he has borne it and apologised, and she loves him still, helplessly and easily. Yet the thought of sleeping beside him thickens the breath in her body.

Damayanti disrobes while Nala watches her, gestures him into silence as she struggles with the clasp of her _valaya_ and unhooks the _karanaphool_ from her ears. She extinguishes the standing lamps and makes her way to the bed in the moonlight flooding the many windows, closes her eyes and breathes slowly, carefully, to keep from weeping. She must fall asleep before Nala comes to bed, or else watch all night lest he escape again. Ah, foolish thought, for why would he leave with his kingdom laid at his feet again, and how could she stop him should he choose to wander the world without her?

In the morning Nala is still in the bed, still asleep with his head pillowed on her breast. They have moved towards each other in the night across the expanse of silk, and she has both arms wrapped around his body. A child’s claim, resisting the world: this is mine and you may never have it! She had woken thus her first morning as a wife, and every morning since; how little it had withstood the travails of life, how incapably it had resisted her husband’s wilfulness. This morning he is in her arms again, his mouth twitching into a smile as he wakes.


End file.
